Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Remote sensing

Appreciate the gravity

Nature volume 391, pages 434–435 (1998)Cite this article

Two satellites will soon be launched that can measure annual variations in the Earth's gravity due to mass changes equivalent to 1 cm of water over 250,000 km2 — an area smaller than the Caspian Sea. This is gravity measurement of unprecedented accuracy. It will affect nearly all areas of study of the Earth, with the greatest advances expected in the study of ocean dynamics, continental water-table variations, sea-level rise, glaciology, and postglacial rebound. These possible applications were discussed at a meeting last monthFootnote 1 and have been addressed in a National Research Council (NRC) report1.

* American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco, 8-12 December 1997.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Figure 1: Sinuous grace: a simulation of the changes in separation between the two GRACE satellites, for two different mass changes on the Earth's surface.

Notes

  1. * American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting, San Francisco, 8-12 December 1997.

References

  1. Satellite Gravity and the Geosphere (Natl Acad. Press, Washington DC, 1997).

  2. Dugan, J. T. & Cox, D. A. US Geological Survey, Water Resources Investigations Report 94-4157 (1994).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Thomas A. Herring

Authors
  1. Thomas A. Herring
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Herring, T. Appreciate the gravity. Nature 391, 434–435 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/35017

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/35017

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing